Ceremony

I attended the sweatlodge purification ceremony again last night, and it was different in a good way. For one thing, James has decided to move the site to a VERY hidden location deep in the forest, and make it more of a special invitation event. He was so excited to call me and eagerly plead with me to come see it! He gave me directions in the way only an Indian can, since there are no real roads out here--just an old weed path. Obviously, I didn't drive the Solara convertible!  So my son and I rumbled over logs and weeds and holes in our van, deeper and deeper into the forest until we found the small clearing in a grove of trees deep in the heart of undeveloped tribal land, facing east.  This lodge is smaller than the others, which also meant it takes far fewer rocks to heat. I met James'  sons for the first time, and found out that James and i have similar approaches to child naming. My sons' names are Cheyenne River and Cedar Ojibway, and James' sons are named River Sage, Rocky Boy, and Sundance. My son had more fun playing with his new friends at the lodge than anything else (partly because we forgot the Ritalin).  Funny moment: as my friend Billy drove up into the camp, we suddenly smelled the thick odor of skunk. We started joking, "Man, it smells like he hit something in his car--and dragged it with him!" and "Naw, that's just Billy. That's how he always smells." etc. As it turns out, a skunk had been sitting in the trail through the woods as he drove up. Instead of dodging out of the way, the skunk ran ahead of him down the trail in the same direction as Billy, trying to out-pace Billy's pickup, spraying the truck all the way. Stupid skunk. As I progress in my learning of Cheyenne songs, I appreciate the ceremony more each week. I had much to bring to the Grandfathers this week, starting with repentance for my own errors and hurtful actions which have occasionally not only injured others, but violated my own deeply-held and authentic desire to be a positive, gentle, and reverent ally and friend. Being human, we each bring our fallibilities to our relationships with others, and sometimes we have blindspots to ourselves that need to be acknowledged when we discover them, and thus corrected. The first step in this, I think, is humble repentance, which in my life means prayer--not because I'm some "great guy," but because all too often I'm not.  So many times I have  looked at patients - usually women - in their deepest pits, darkest moments, emptiest of times. They shudder with pure shame, faces drenched with tears and humiliation and worthlessness, arms cut and bodies sore, eyes vacantly gazing down. And in that moment I see no shame or failure, I see human beings with astounding combinations of potential and shortfalls. Sooner or later, they will also see the same propensity to fail, err, or misstep in me as well, and I can just hope they remember when the tables were turned. But most of all, I hope that each of us can see ourselves this way, and thus forgive ourselves and notcarry dreadful burdens of undeserved shame and self-blame. This includes me as well, of course, and this was what I brought to the Grandfathers last night. I also offered prayers for each of you, every name I could remember from RAR.